sharkster77

I am closer to 70 than 60, and my parents had a box of that exact same glass ornaments.

When we cruised in 2019 Viking offered both Diet Coke and Coke Zero. Don't know if they offered the caffeine-free version or not.

You will not find them. Port times on river cruises are very fluid, depending on port conditions, time needed to pass through locks, etc. This is one of many reasons why doing third-party port tours is difficult. Viking cannot tell you the times because they won't know until the last minute, in some cases.

In the North End the city instituted a $7500 annual fee for outdoor dining because it involved using space from narrow streets. In the Back Bay where there are sidewalks, no fee I believe. North Enders took the city to court. Frankly don't remember how it all sorted out.

In the Boston area, COVID led to many restaurants offering outdoor dining. As life has returned to quasi-normalcy, the city has tried to rescind the permissions to offer outdoor dining. There has been lots of pushback from both restauranteurs and patrons, as the former saw increased seating and revenue, and the latter enjoyed dining outdoors on warm summer nights.

Just guessing here, but I would expect cabins to be identical, at worse mirror images of each other, so that the bathrooms of adjacent cabins share a common wall, for ease of plumbing.

A friend who cruised a while ago sat at dinner one night and a tablemate asked the waiter what time they would leave port. The waiter replied that they had started sailing 20 minutes ago! When we sailed in 2019, very often we would not realize we were moving unless we looked out the windows. Also you can see both riverbanks at all times. At the safety drill we were told that if the ship were to sink, just go up to the top deck---the ship was taller than the river was deep. I am susceptible to motion due to balance issues and I was not seasick for a single second during 8 days on the Rhine.

Bottles of water are always available. As you depart or return from a tour, just grab one off the tray near the gangplank. Outside of meals, soda and alcohol must be purchased. However, at the end of dinner, the waiter will often ask if you need a 'refill' which you can bring into the lounge.

We enjoyed the Medieval Colmar optional excursion very much. Those who did the WWII Colmar tour raved about that one as well. The only other optional we did was the medieval palaces of Bruhl, while docked in Cologne. Quite often if you don't have an afternoon tour booked, you can take a shuttle back or simply walk back into town after lunch and wander on your own---in Strasbourg we paid for our own lunch and stayed in town, it was so delightful. Our 2019 itinerary was slightly different. We had both Marksburg Castle and Heidelberg as included tours, and I believe they are optional for you. Both of them were very good. On river cruises, third-party tours are very difficult to line up. Port arrival and departure times are fluid, dependent on how crowded the locks are, and what the dockmaster has to say. Often the ship will drop you off in one port for a tour, then sail away, to go through a lock for example, and pick you up at another port. So the third party tour provider needs to know where the ship will be when the tour is over. That is one huge difference between ocean and river cruising. That said, river cruises give you one included excursion in every port--not many on the ocean do that (Viking Ocean is one of them, as the ocean cruises follow the river cruise model).

Viking will even bring you wine glasses and uncork the wine you've brought on board if you'd like them too---nothing at all like the almost-body-searches after returning to an ocean liner! I believe other river cruise lines will also do the same.

Instead of Basel take a one hour train from there and spend your extra time in Lucerne--it is compact, walkable and lovely. If you're flying home out of Zurich, Lucerne is an easy 1 hour train ride to the airport (train station in the terminal).

What month were you in Colmar? In mid-October I don't remember seeing any other buses.

Interesting that you mentioned Heidelberg. We did the Rhine in October of 2019 and Heidelberg was the only port that was so crowded I found myself thinking "WOW, what must this place be like in July-August!" Could not believe how many people were touring the castle in mid-October on a weekday. Cologne, Strasbourg, Colmar, not crowded at all.

We did the Rhine in early October, and ended with 2 nights in Lucerne in mid-October. Folks were still dining outside along the river in Lucerne when we were there. Weather along the Rhine was raining a few days, but gorgeous in Lucerne. I would never sail in July for two reasons: --too darn hot --after being forced to vacation in the summer (as a teacher) when I retired I vowed to travel in the spring or fall, when school is back in session!

Oh, I should mention, that if someone doesn't want to stay with the walking tour, just let the local guide know that you are going on your own, and they'll tell you where and when to re-join the group to get your bus back to the ship. As mentioned, the ship may not be where you left it!

Rafting is when river ships are docked side by side, with only inches between them. So someone who may have a balcony could look out their window and see into a cabin in the adjacent ship--better make sure you're decent! When ships are rafted, if your ship is on the inside, you may have to go either across the upper deck of the other ships or through their lobbies to get to yours. There just isn't enough docking space in many ports for all the river cruise traffic. It is abundantly clear what times the shuttles to the ship run---the rendezvous point will be pointed out at the end of the walking tour. In our case the walking tour ended after our cathedral visit around 11AM, with shuttles at 2:30 and 4:30. The Black Forest excursion involves a bus ride to a couple of scenic overlooks, then a stop at a complex that demonstrates (and sells) cuckoo clock building, glass blowing, Black Forest cake construction, along with a trail through the forest to a waterfall. On our day it was pouring, so nobody did the hike! Our Colmar excursion was in the morning--it was fantastic. Back to the ship for lunch, then off to the Black Forest. Not exhausting, since the BF was a bus tour, mostly. There is no need to worry. Viking took very good care of us--treated us like royalty. Cannot wait for our Tulip Cruise with Viking coming up in April!

One of the optional excursions is a pub crawl in Cologne to experience drinking the local kolsch beer. It runs after dinner. We had no interest and skipped it. If the ship is in port for a while, like Cologne or Strasbourg, for example, they will run shuttles back to the ship at given times. If you have free time like in the aforementioned cities, you are told to be sure you are on the last shuttle back to the ship (usually late afternoon), or you could be left behind. A typical day has a morning tour, back for lunch, and then an afternoon tour which may or may not be an included one. If you don't take the optional tour then you have the ability to wander around in town on your own. For example we did the included Cologne tour in the AM, went back for lunch, then did the optional tour to the Bruhl palaces in the afternoon. In Strasbourg we did the included tour, but had no afternoon tour booked (none of the optionals appealed to us) so we stayed in Strasbourg and spent the afternoon wandering around, looking in shop windows, munching on macarons, having a wonderful time. There was one day that we did the optional Colmar tour in the AM, and the included tour of the Black Forest in the PM. Another day we did Kinderdijk windmills in the AM, with scenic cruising in the afternoon. Ocean cruises have set port arrivals and departures that you can depend on. Not so on rivers. Navigating locks can take loads of time queuing up, so why not do this while passengers are on a tour? If you don't know about "rafting", please ask---that's a whole other thing to explain!!

Our walking tour began and ended at the cathedral. From there you can walk to many sights. The tower tour is something available to anybody who pays for it---not a special thing exclusive to Viking passengers. If you return to the ship for lunch, there will be shuttles in the afternoon returning you to city center--no need for an Uber. Because of the pub crawl, we didn't sail from Cologne until 10 PM-ish. Seeing the cathedral, churches and bridges lit up at night while we sailed away was a highlight @Ellen495, are you new to river cruising, after many ocean cruises? If so, river cruising is VERY different from what you may be used to on the ocean. Booking independent tours is difficult for many reasons--every port already has an included tours, departure times from port are fluid due to river and lock conditions (often you are dropped off at one port, and the ship moves through locks while you are gone, and you reboard the ship at a different port).

Viking does a great Medieval Colmar tour---definitely don't skip it! RE: Cologne, if you aren't doing an optional afternoon tour, you may have time to do the Top of Cologne on your own. When we cruised, after the morning tour of Cologne, if you had no afternoon tour booked, you could either return to the ship for lunch (and go back by shuttle to Cologne center) or just stay in town, have lunch on your own dime, and spend more time in Cologne.

Is the castle region of the Middle Rhine between Speyer and Rudesheim? Not sure, but if it is, that is definitely a good reason to stay on the ship.

Agree 1000%---we know other companies are good, but we liked what Viking gave us and are willing to sail with them again.

Oh, OK. T&W goes Amsterdam to Amsterdam, so I just assumed H&B did the same. I can see now how reversing direction would change Keukenhof from one end of the cruise to the other. I would rather do Keukenhof, the highlight of the cruise, at the end, when jetlag is no longer a factor!

We sail this April on Tulips and Windmills. We chose that one (last year) because we wanted to see more of Belgium, which T&W had more of than H&B. Just last week we were notified that a change in itinerary removed that advantage--it looks like we can opt for Bruges but Ghent may be off the table. H&B goes to Aachen in Germany, which would be interesting, as it was Charlemagne's capital, and the cathedral is said to look like a fortress as much as it looks like a church. T&W does Keukenhof at the end of the cruise, while H&B does it at the beginning. I guess it becomes six of one, half-dozen of the other.

We sat there in third grade and the principal piped the radio feed into the classrooms so that the nuns could listen in. We sorta knew what was going on, but I wish someone had explained to us what a motorcade was. Stupid me, since I was only 7 and it was in Dallas, Texas, I had pictured a cowboy-style ambush of the president. Later when I got home and watched on TV it all made sense. At one point we were restless and Sister Daniel could not hear. She told us to be quiet because "it was the voice of God on the radio(!)" You could hear a pin drop for the rest of the afternoon.

We just figure that with the money we save by booking aquarium class, we can almost book another vacation (non-cruise, of course). We looked at the cost difference and just couldn't justify it. As my daughter often tells us "Of course, you do you". What one spends their money on is their own business, right? On our 8 day Rhine cruise I cannot think of any occasion we would have had time to sit on a balcony and watch the world go by. One afternoon when we cruised from Kinderdijk towards the Rhine, we spent a lovely time in the lounge, where we could see out of the floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides of the ship, and did a mile walk on the top deck (12 laps)